Increasing soil salinity in Australia is a serious land degradation issue. All over the country, salt is rising out of the ground and destroying our farms, homes and towns. All over the country, salt is rising out of the ground and destroying our farms, homes and towns. …

Salinity has been caused by extensive land clearing in Australia, predominantly for agricultural purposes. Land clearance can also lead to soil erosion and, when it results in a changing water balance, to dryland salinity.

Western Australia
The scale of the dryland salinity problem More than 1 million hectares of agricultural land in the south-west of Western Australia (WA) is severely affected by salt.

Soil Salinity Measurements

Most of Australia’s soils are ancient, strongly weathered and infertile. Some areas have younger and more fertile soils; these mainly occur in the east. Australian soils have many distinctive features.

Major programs. The Australian Government has supported salinity management through programs such as the National Dryland Salinity Program (1993-2004) and the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality (2001-2008).

The concentration of dissolved salt in a given volume of water is called salinity. Salinity is either expressed in grams of salt per kilogram of water, or in parts per thousand (ppt, or ‰). Water with salinity above 50 ppt is brine water, though not many organisms can survive in such a high salt concentration.

Saline soils are usually categorized into three types, ie, saline, sodic, and alkaline sodic soil [54].

North. The northern region encompasses Queensland and New South Wales and generally has high inherent soil fertility. It has relatively high seasonal rainfall and production variability compared with the other two regions.

In warmer climates, like Australia, chemical weathering is more common. Chemical weathering occurs when conditions change the materials that make up the rock and soil. As the rust expands, it weakens the rock and helps break it apart. The oxides produced through this process give the ground its reddish hue.

Methods of prevention monitor groundwater levels and the amount of salt in the land and water. encourage preventative actions to stop salt moving towards the surface. stop further loss of deep-rooted native vegetation in high-risk areas as well as areas that contribute groundwater to them.

Increasing soil salinity in Australia is a serious land degradation issue. All over the country, salt is rising out of the ground and destroying our farms, homes and towns. To understand why we have this problem, we need to go way back in Australia’s history.

The areas that are most prone to degrade due to salinity in Australia are the Eastern and Western Mallee located in Western Australia. The neighboring lands to Dumbleyung Lake and East Lake Bryde have also been damaged due to salinity.

Soil acidity affects approximately 50 million hectares (50 per cent of Australia’s agricultural land) and about 23 million hectares of subsoil layers, mostly in Western Australia and New South Wales ( NLWRA 2001 ).

Salinity and water are inextricably linked. This means salinity is affected by climate variability, which can tend towards extremes in New South Wales. Salinity usually occurs with other natural resource problems such as decreasing soil and water quality, erosion and loss of native vegetation.